Store employees discovered the broken windows July 27 and assumed the incident was just run-of-the-mill vandalism, owner Nick Pappas, who has run the store at 3068 Claremont Ave. since 1974, told The Chronicle on Tuesday.

FBI agents visited the store Monday and told employees they suspected animal rights activists, Pappas said. In a posting on the “Direct Action” section of the website of Bite Back, an animal rights group in Florida, someone posted a picture of the broken windows at the store.

Someone describing himself or herself as “veganarchist lone wolf” wrote, “On the night of (the) 26th two windows were smashed at Star Meats in Berkeley CA, a butcher shop that boasts about its organic and locally sourced meat. Cage free, organic, murder is murder and death is death. This is a continuation of last years actions in which windows were smashed out of Waylands Meat Market in Oakland and windows smashed in an East Oakland Burger King.”

“Their tradition is really extreme,” Pappas said. “That’s why they call them animal-rights extremists. People eat meat. It’s not only legal, but I think it’s desirable. I don’t know why they would do something like that.”